really warmed to, is control over unfair fiscal leveraging and arbitrage specula-
tions. In Korten’s view (1995: 277) the choice for societies:
Is a choice between organising for the human interest and arguing for the corporate
interest....[and] that ifwe focus on creating societies that enhance the quality of our
living rather than the quantity of our consumption, we can move simultaneously
toward sustainability and a better life for nearly everyone.Most people would accept this reasoning unequivocally, and accord all power to
Korten’s logic, although there remains embedded in his polemic the little itali-
cized word ‘if’, for nobody can envisage whenthe likes of the G7 – IMF – WTO
will tax inter-nation arbitrage and speculation – empowerments currently beyond
their delivery and enforcement capacity. Because we appreciate how much of a
struggle it has been to reduce the rate of environmental damage and to avoid some
singular kinds of environmental meltdown (for example, the prohibition of CFCs)
what chance is there for controlling fiscal outages and avoiding a fiscal meltdown?
Probably ‘none’ or ‘little’ which qualifies this urgency as an imperative for under-
scoring conservation withdevelopment as politically correct practice, noton an
all-or-nothing basis, but by tipping the balance toward a ‘tolerable harmony’ for
solid social reasons. The formula involves increasing returns by concomitantly
reducing the social risks: fashioning good design out of environmental dysfunc-
tion, and achieving wellbeing out of fiscal imbalance.
The overall urban and regional situation remains largely uncomprehended,
loosely coordinated and chaotically managed. It is all so incremental and
confusing – ‘does it really matter?’ Should the current generation simply get
by, and not be concerned that fresh water abstraction throughout semi-arid
Australia and western North America will eventually turn saline or dry out
the landscape? Does it matter that food production is becoming genetically
engineered?
The settler society environmental problematic profiles fertilizer-saturated soils,
the hybridization and genetic modification of flora and fauna, the mining of irre-
placeable ground-water resources, the biospheric accumulation of irreducible
toxins;andthe sprawl of low-density dysfunctional suburbia crisscrossed by
fossil-fuelled motor vehicles making often pointless journeys as a consequence of
workplaces, home places, school places and shopping places being situated within
separately zoned precincts. Furthermore much of horticulture, farming, fishing,
forestry and mining is practised unsustainably. Finally, unemployment increases,
trapping those lucky to have a job in a narcissistic ‘40-hour five days a week’ work-
warp while the unemployed morph into the unemployable.
These are all recognizable flaws, and indeed they are frequently acknowledged:
yet nothing much changes. The significant point is that nations, within their sov-
ereign boundaries and within their established systems, have ‘ownership’ of these
problems and are positioned to fashion within-nation solutions according to their
political persuasion. For this reason this concluding chapter seeks to profile the
‘big picture’ identifiers and motivation scenario for attaining the within-nation
sustainability paradigm set down in the earlier pages.
Tipping the Balance 271